Chicago! + WIP Wednesday

I went to Vogue Knitting Live in Chicago this weekend.

It was the first time it had ever been held there, and I went by myself,  because all of the knitters local to me go to Stitches Midwest.

I'll get the comparisons out of the way first.

The teachers are knitting celebrities. They know their stuff, and they have the books, patterns, and national recognition to prove it. Apparently at stitches there are not as many big name teachers, and most of them are people who teach at LYS's. So the class quality is the same at Stitches as if you were just taking classes locally.

Since it is Vogue, the attitude was tilted more snooty and high fashion. Not my cup of tea, but fine as long as you know that is what you are going for. The teachers were not snooty. More so the volunteers/staff, and the choice of vendors. Sorry, 50g of Quviut was not worth 164 bucks to me.

The market was small. I was surprised at how many vendors had yarn I could just buy at my LYS. When I did my walk through on Saturday I would stop and look at skeins that caught my eye, and most of the time it was Mad Tosh, or Malabrigo. Eh, not worth it. The deals were not ridiculous, except for a feeding frenzy in the back corner for 10 skein bags of yarn. I am at the point where my stash doesn't need loads more yarn. It just needs really nice and wonderful stuff. That said, I went looking for some merino silk lace, indie dyer sock yarn, and was convinced to pick something up for the DSLO. The biggest contrast to stitches was that there were not many books. A booth might only have 1-2 at VKL (and only a few at that). At Stitches you could fill a library by visiting only a few booths.

From talking with people who had been to both, the organization was a little lacking. There were not many free group events, there was no passing time between lectures and classes, it was a bit of a maze to get from floor to floor (old swanky hotel). I had heard that there were shuttles to LYS's online, but I never saw any signs. It seems like it was easier to get to the store and take a shuttle back to the hotel. Large groups held their own events, like a pajama party (a la Stitches). Vogue dropped the ball on that one.

Parking was $40 a day. A 3 day 'L' pass was $14. Park somewhere else and take the train around town. Not going to lie. The public transportation option on google maps blew my mind. Yes, I know it has been there forever. But wow!

I wish I had brought a smart phone (as in owned one in the first place). It would have been so much easier to figure out where to eat. There were many places, but I had no clue if they would be any good. I lucked out for dinner, I was a little disappointed by lunch. I didn't want to eat at chains, but I couldn't tell if they were or not.

Ok, end review!

I had a great time. Based on my experience, I would love to try other large knitting convention/conference/events. Sock Summit, and Super Summer Knitaway come to mind as ones that would be good fits for me. Why you ask? I am in many respects mostly a sock knitter, so the classes and marketplace meant for socks would be more interesting to me. It did not seem like there were advanced sock classes. For the latter I am an introvert, and huge crowds exhaust me. So, a more intimate knitting retreat would be much more fun than something huge.

One of the cool things was that if I saw someone knitting, I could just sit down and join them and strike up a conversation.Or stop someone and ask what pattern that was, or what yarn they used. It was so open and inviting. As an advantage of being on my own, I got to talk to a lot of different people.

I arrived on Friday. I got caught up in a traffic jam, and basically stayed in 1st or neutral for over an hour. Sheesh, taking the more reliable car, with the stiff clutch was a bad idea. I was staying with a friend in Near West Side, so I arrived, we caught up over coffee at Sip. From there we went downtown to the hotel so I could register for VKL, and get a friend into a class.

From there we started walking.

Until we came across a place that looked good.

 And it was. We sat outside, with space heaters. It was delightfully warm, and we laughed about how we beat the rush, because we could see the swarm of people trying to get in.

From there we went to a movie. We saw Argo, which was incredibly tense. So we walked back to her place, which was a good 2.5 miles.

I emptied out my bag to prepare for a long day of knitting, and make sure I had everything I needed.

I was so excited I woke up at 5:30 Saturday. I got a Vanilla Latte, and walked to the 'L' as the sun was starting to brighten the sky.

I arrived super early. So a camped out in the lobby, and random knitters joined me as I hung out.

My first class was with Deborah Newton. I loved her dry humor, and she had a lot of ideas about how to go about finishing sweaters. My main take away was seamed sweaters have many opportunities for design, and improving fit, that a raglan can't provide.We practiced seaming on our swatches, and we never got around to the other types of seams, or sewing on buttons. I probably won't attach buttons with yarn. While Deb has finished many sweaters, she has not kept many sweaters, which means I am using thread.

I went to the This is Your Brain on Knitting lecture from Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. There were a lot of interesting points in it. I think my favorite quote was "I've heard crack is really awesome, aside from the ruining your life part." I am so glad I was able to see her, because I was kicking myself for not going the last time she was in Chicago.

My last class on Saturday was Knit to Flatter and Fit with Sally Melville. Since I was coming straight from the lecture, I came into class late. As I was walking in, she was saying we would learn how to make beautiful fitting sweaters, like mine : ). This was the class where we took measurements of ourselves (because husbands are not dependable partners in this regard), and played with paper dolls, and got guidelines on how to mod patterns to make them fit. There was so much good info in this class. I need to sit down with my Bohus and make sure the waist is correct. As in, located at my waist. . .

The walk back was very chill. I took another picture of the skyline.

The morning of the last day was dreary. One of the houses went all out. For Halloween.

My only class that day was Oddball Stitches. Yea! Cookie A! Basically the point of her class was to get us to try wacky things and see if they worked. I also visited the market. More on that later.

For some reason it was much later coming back the last day.

Happily is was much faster to leave Chicago, than to enter. So I managed to get home in record time.

I finished the socks!

So cheerful! I kitchenered the toe Saturday during my afternoon class. I gave them to their recipient Sunday morning. This is the only proof. Haha.

For the work in progress portion of this post . . . I am hauling on the Evenstar.

Oh wait, you can't tell. It is in vague lace bag stage, from now until the conclusion.

I might pull my wires out to show how it looks so far.

Check out the other WIP'ers here! It is the easiest one to join by far. You have to actually finish something for FO Friday, haha.

That's all for now, take care,

Molly : )

Still Socks

Socks are all I want to knit right now.

They are a little complicated, but quite colorful, and rather quick. Complicated is the wrong word. It is a ktbl purl pattern mostly so there is a lot of hand movement for any given row, since I an constantly flipping which side the yarn is on.

The pooling changed between the leg and the foot, so it isn't quite as neat as the stack I was getting. The colors are pretty true in this photo. I have been leaving before light, and not feeling like photos until dark. I finally had a little photoshoot outdoors.

It was rainy and miserable. The sort where the campus buses are overflowing, and you spend all day slightly damp.

I am 1 repeat into the 1 1/2 for the leg.

I really want to finish stuff, and I am sure if I focused on the sweater that could happen. But on the same token, the progress seems so much faster on the socks.

The DSLO and I made a huge effort this weekend to clean and put together our house. The boxes of stray crap were put in the attic, the office was 90% unpacked and put away. And the whole main room was swept. What this means now, is that there is no excuse not to have the house warming party. Things are presentable, which is wonderful. The occasion for the scramble was my parents and sister coming to visit. It was time to deal with the mess.

After my family left I cooked up a storm. I made butterscotch ice cream, and hazelnut brown butter cake. The cake turned out great. The ice cream . . . well, I burned it. How do you burn ice cream? My stove runs hot, and I seem to be burning butter quite frequently. So in one step you put 2 TBS of butter and 1 c. brown sugar, and you cook until bubbly. Maybe I missed the first bubbly and made it to the boiling. Not sure. The moment the cream hit the mixture there was a glomping and instant boiling. It wasn't ruined, but it wasn't the best it could be.

It looks right, it is just a little charred tasting.

The cake however was a big hit. And it was the first time I ever made cake from scratch. It had everything a good cake should be, an easy frosting, a moist tender center, an quick turn around for making, then baking. My store was not so fancy to be selling vanilla beans so I used extract, and it took a few minutes of staring at the nuts to find hazelnuts, but it was all worth it.

 
One of my labmates asked for me to make it again sometime, if he is in desperate need for cake.

The apo challenge was to only use the capabilities of the first version of Apophysis: apo 2.02. I thought this was a really classy flame. The next challenge is epispiral. It is an odd variation, as in strange. It makes for this oil slick, smooth appearance.

The relentlessly cheerful socks

I am knitting thank you socks. And I am now obsessed with knitting thank you socks.

I did a whole repeat last night, after I got home late. . . because I knit a swatch on the bus going to class that morning, and then I did the cuff in class and during lunch knitting. And I had to stop because I didn't remember the chart.

I ripped the first chart out. I had a brilliant plan. Oh yes, improving on Cookie A.

I really hate how the yarnover on top of yarnover looked. They just turned into bars.

 When I first did this pattern for fingerless gloves, I knit through the back of the loop to take up the extra slack.

When I did this pattern again for Joni's gloves, I did a M1 increase instead of the yarnover.

This time, I had a whole new plan.

Instead of having the pattern on every row, I added a rest row. Purl the purls, ktbl all the knits.Yes it makes the swoop more subtle, but is also makes the YO's look like O's instead of boxes. I suspect the swoop will still be very obvious when it is on the foot.

 Does it count as an entirely new pattern? No, probably not. Basically it is a continuation of a long line of attempts at this pattern where I disregard the instructions and do what I want.

One thing is certain. These are relentlessly cheerful socks.

The pooling! It is so crazy!

The colors are so bright!

The pattern is so logical!

It is much more interesting than my other projects. Haha. Poor other projects. Not as sexy as these socks are right now.

I didn't submit this in time for the challenge, but that is no biggie. My entry won this week! It was the spare change challenge, and I still had julian rings on the mind.

This is the second challenge I have ever won. The last time was when I made a 5 minute fractal after coming back from a long break.

That's all for now, take care guys

Molly : )

All we need is a little help

It is funny about blog speak. To even admit that something was rough, is to imply that things are really bad. You try really hard to push the wonderful, and to sweep the dreadful under the rug.

I came to the realization recently that something was dreadfully amiss, and I found out ways that I could make it better, and I got into contact with the right people, change is coming, and I really hope it is for the best.

The big thing is when things are wrong, and you can't make them better, you need to get help.

I started to do my homework for Vogue Knitting Live. I have to knit one hell of a swatch for the finishing class. I still don't entirely grok the instructions. I just need to pull out the yarn and get it over with.

By the magic of my slow posting habits, the spent the entire weekend knitting  the swatch. Mostly the instructions were getting you to knit the cable centered on the swatch.

I will live dangerously and not block it. I ripped it out and restarted so many times I am very over this swatch.

The other class that has homework has you take a picture in your bra and underwear and you have to trace out your figure. I used technology, because, I only have access to one very public printer. It is so strange to see a vector copy of myself. I have some strange topology.

My hair has the strangest topology of all. What weird shapes can it be put into? Why does all of if flip in the same direction?

I post this mostly because the class  is about knitting sweaters that suit you, and I am trying to wing waist shaping on the Bohus. I am pretty close. Not close enough to finish before the 15th. That was the deadline for the whatcha swatchin podcast. So far so good on how it is shaping up. Soon I will have a sweater. Soon I will be done doing waist decreases too. Maybe tomorrow.

I will be starting my thank you socks for the sweater very soon. I am doing Pomatomus by popular vote, because I was torn between that and Monkey. We are having a designer KAL in sock knitters. Wendy Johnson, Cookie A, Claire Ellen, and Jeannie Cartmel. I might do magic mirror by Jeannie Cartmel before the end of November. Who knows? I certainly don't. I needed a pattern that could hold up to the serious variegation in this yarn. And I wanted to try out the bamboo size 1 needles. Because I have never not used metal on socks.

This weekend was spent catching up on life. There was much cleaning, and planning, and buying. The honeymoon in Hawaii is now a go. We bought the plane tickets, and we reserved the accommodations. The house is far less messy and many boxes have been put away. And negotiations were completed satisfactorily for 600 some dollars of wedding gift cards. The only unplanned purchase was the ice cream maker attachment to the kitchenaid mixer, and gummi bears. Yeah, they said they were the world's best, and only science can verify this.

I finished 1 fractal that I got around to posting this week.

It gives a pretty interesting perspective on Julian Rings.

That's all for now, take care guys.

Molly : )

Trucking and Flying

This week has been a rocky one. We all have them. The week where you can hear the sound of deadlines whooshing by.

I started the evenstar swatch at the engineering grad student knit night. First I did 4's, and that was huge, so switched to 2's which was the same size as the first swatch. Then I realized the FUBAR'ed the pattern, so I concluded wine and evenstars are incompatible. Then I cast on again for some reason (wine might be to blame) and I am was satisfied with the result. Yes, it is small, but I am ok with it not being ginormous. I don't own size 3 circulars.

I might need to break out the highlighter tape, because I feel like I am losing my place in the chart. Normally I am pretty good about reading my knitting, and then there are some days where I just want to buy a row counter and be done with it.

The sweater body continues. I've done 7 1/2 inches since the armpits. I tried it on, and I think I guessed right on adding waist shaping. I am not sure if I want to take up some of the fabric in the back. It is looser there.

Maybe looking up a pattern to verify that the shaping I am planning on doing would be a good idea. The sweater is so freaking cute from the front. I don't own a sweater book, so I am flying fairly blind. My book  has no shaping whatsoever.

This is the trucking part of the post. Now that I have accepted that the body is boring knitting, I can find ways to make knitting the body less boring. Like flying to Indianapolis in a 4 seat prop plane.

Did you know the Indy Regional Airport gives free coffee! Well, that wasn't the best part actually.

There were no pictures of lunch. And since I didn't ask, there were no pictures of me knitting on the plane. I did, since I am trucking on the sweater.

No clue if I will need to break into the 3rd skein. It seems like I have a decent amount of the 2nd. Likely it means I will not need to implement the emergency backup plans.

The apo challenge was loose change this week. So I made a pile of coins.

  I made a whole series of these grand julians. I fudged some things with this one in photoshop. Mostly to soften things up and give it some extra shine.

That's all for now, take care guys

Molly : )